


Escapism

by AlexMeg



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (not between drarry), Angst and Hurt/Comfort, But heads up for sexually predatory behaviour by OMC, Curses, Fast Friendship, Forced Marriage, Friends to Lovers, Lucius Malfoy Being an Asshole, M/M, Minor Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Minor Luna Lovegood/Ginny Weasley, Minor Neville Longbottom/Blaise Zabini, Mutual Pining, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining Harry, Slow Burn, Texting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 02:29:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29959611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexMeg/pseuds/AlexMeg
Summary: Harry's got a fast bike. Draco's trying to get away from something.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 11
Kudos: 50





	Escapism

**Author's Note:**

> It's possible there may be additional tags/warnings later on, which will be given chapter by chapter and added in the tags (Again, do look out for sexually predatory behaviour by OMC in future chapters, but it will steer clear of anything beyond that)
> 
> This chapter deals with some grief as well, and ONE very vague discussion of mpreg (but this will play no role in the fic)

Lucius is the one who announces the engagement between Draco Malfoy and Anthony Crawford. He stands high on the stairs to garner everybody's attention, raises a toast to the new couple. Some feet away, his son stares into the middle distance, silver eyes like a layer of thin ice, unmoving amidst the hall of the gala breaking into wild applause and chatter.

Crawford is half-blood. Filthy rich. He has quite the position in the higher society and the Ministry, or so that is what Blaise tells him, his hand at the middle of Neville's back.

Harry looks at Crawford, who must be twenty years older than Malfoy, and that is at the least. His hair is graying at his temples. He has a stern sort of face, when he isn't smiling, but his cheeks wrinkle with lines when he does. A squinty and tight sort of smile, nodding and raising his glass to the crowd, only there for the people to see.

"He looks very old," Harry says. Malfoy is only nineteen, all of them not even a year fresh out of Hogwarts.

“Yeah, he is," Neville agrees, though he doesn't seem half as bemused by this as Harry is.

"Thirty-eight, I believe. To be exact. But then that's hardly ever been an issue here, Potter," Blaise says, so Harry takes his word for it. But going through school with Malfoy, he knows well how vain he is, and it begs the question as to whether this is truly out of love.

It doesn't take him long to come to a conclusion.

"All you Malfoys," Harry says, finding him alone in the balcony a while later. He lets himself drop casually against the doorway, pushing his hands inside his trouser pockets. "So greedy for money."

Malfoy's eyes darted half-way through towards the sound of his voice, startled. But his head whips away instantly after he identifies him, processes what he's said, this with a longsuffering exhale and a roll of his eyes. "Oh, fuck off," he mutters, sounds strange underneath his annoyance, not quite all of himself. He's only just stopped wearing black, almost a year later, in mourning for his mother. Some illness took her near the end of Eighth Year.

"I can't imagine why else you would marry somebody like him." The Malfoys lost a great part of their wealth to the Ministry after the trials, and along with that, their reputation. It made sense.

"You know a lot about my type, do you, Potter," Draco says dryly.

"He's like, forty," Harry says. He pushes off the doorway, moving inside and towards him. 

"And you care so much about what I do with my life, why?"

Harry shrugs, stopping next to him, jostling a hand out of a pocket to put it to the balustrade. "I don't."

"Then shut your bloody mouth."

It's a funny thing, that Harry is not so angered by him or his antics anymore. That he only finds himself turning his head away to hide a noiseless snort, an almost-laugh. He isn't sure what changed between them, what it was that drained away, left them with. 

Harry spoke for him and his family at the trials, and saved him from the Fiendfyre, a Death-Eater. He attended Narcissa Malfoy's funeral, watched him grieve her silently. Draco refused to give him away in the Manor, thanked him reluctantly for everything he did, and then later for coming to his mother's funeral. Through Eighth Year, they were mostly distant, though snippy when they did bump accidentally into each other. But it was a weak sort of rendition, like they were trying to keep something up, not knowing anything else. 

In his peripheral vision, he can see Draco is eying him now, leaning on his arms atop the parapet. "What are you laughing at?"

Harry shakes his head. "Nothing. Just—God, you used to be so bloody infuriating."

"I used to be," Draco repeats flatly.

"You used to be," Harry repeats back, looking at him.

Draco holds his stare for a while. Then, he looks down below, snorting, a hint of a smirk. "As if you were ever any less infuriating. Every day I wanted to upend a table over your stupid head." 

He sounds a bit absent now, examining something below. Harry follows his gaze, finds his motorbike there. Draco was stood here on this balcony then too, when Harry flew in on it. From the different levels, their eyes had met, brief and wordless, as Harry was drawing a leg off over the seat, balancing his bike upright.

"Didn't think I'd ever see _you_ at one of these."

"Blaise. He likes this stuff, and dragged me along." They became friends by virtue of Neville dating him. "He believes I need to go out and socialise more."

"Still can't believe him and Longbottom are really together."

"They're good for each other." Blaise sought Neville's tutoring in Herbology through Eighth Year, fell in love with him there. 

Draco hums. Still yet, his gaze is straying back to Harry's bike, as if fascinated.

" _Accio_ bike," Harry says, and it rises up. Draco stands up straight, stepping back a bit when it comes closer. He tracks its movement as it lowers onto the balcony floor. Harry was about to leave anyhow, though there is still an hour left to the ball, but he's tired of it now. He might as well let Draco have a good look at it before he does. 

"Doesn't look very new," Draco says. 

"It's not. It's my godfather's. He left it to me."

Draco reaches a hand out, curls his palm around the handle. Something in Harry seizes, possessive, uneasy.

It's an odd complex he's developed. For a long time, he had nothing that was his. But now the few that are—the Marauder's Map, his Invisibility Cloak, his bike—he cherished them deeply, and it's unsettling to have anybody trying to touch any of them. But before he can say anything, he is locked in place by the look on Draco's face, the strange gentleness of his fingers when he runs them over the seat of his bike.

"Take me somewhere," Draco says. He lifts his head up at Harry.

Harry pauses at that. Then, a laugh, nearly startling out of him. "What?" 

"Take me somewhere."

Harry blinks, brows twitching up in surprise. Draco glances down at the seat of his bike again. There is a sort of hunger to it, to him. 

Some seconds pass, and Harry does not know what comes over him in them, but he finds himself finally saying, "Where do you want to go?"

"I don't care. Anywhere."

It's strange, a bit dizzying, to have the heat of Draco's body so close to his back, knees at his hips, legs behind his. But it isn't strange, really, because they've been here before. On a broom, flames hot and licking up towards them below. From here, Harry can smell his faint cologne, where he's always put it to the side of his neck in school.

He tries to stay very still when Draco's gloved hand settles, an absent and light touch, at his shoulder. It weighs on him beneath his leather jacket, vividly sensing it, for moments after it is gone.

Harry magically kickstarts the motorcycle, and off they go.

In the sky, they fly over the city, the wind whipping heavy and sharp through them. Harry just moves, going nowhere and everywhere, until they are in muggle London, moving high over the bridge.

Harry lands them down onto an empty part of the highway, golden with streetlights. They bump a little together as they meet the ground from air, the levelled solidity settling beneath them, now only speeding forward with a blurring rapidity.

Behind him, he hears a laugh, free and wide, nearly buried under the roaring of the engine, the winds still muffling their hearing. Harry understands that feeling. He loves it. He loved it just like this, that first time, the purity and openness of an endless road ahead of him, forever moving forward. No limits. Nothing holding him back. He's lived an entire life caged, one way or another. In a cupboard under the stairs. In prophecies. In fear of the unknown. This has always felt a lot like breaking out.

He finds himself grinning, shouting over the rumbling and the rushing of cold, fast air through them, "How does it feel?"

"Free," is the answer that comes back, loud and laughing and breathless. "I feel free."

  
  


…

  
  


They fly over where Harry's house would be under a Fidelius Charm. Harry doesn't expect Draco to say he would like to see Grimmauld Place, and he is perhaps obliging him too much today, because he takes him there and he makes him tea and they talk over it, about many things. 

Somehow by the end of the night, Harry has spilled to him several stories of the Marauders and the bike, and eventually the conversation devolves into the history of the Blacks, the legends and myths behind constellations. Draco knows much about all these things. 

The Northern Crown, Draco seems to find the most fascinating, the two of them sitting sideways on the couch to face each other, in the glow of firelight. His eyes are still bright and the joints of his body seem loosened and open, the face behind that loud and laughing and breathless voice. _Free,_ when he said. _I feel free._ In this, his words come easy and natural, as if stories like these have always been a part of him.

Princess of Crete, Draco tells him. Ariadne, who had fallen in love with Theseus, the King of Athens. Her father, Minos, was a monster stuck in a complex maze made to contain him. She fell in love with Theseus, wanted to escape with him, and so Theseus promised to take her away with him. Theseus defeated Minos, took her to an island, but he deserted her there. There in the island, she was found by another man, Dionysus, who loved her too, treated her with tenderness, and out of this love and tenderness, made her a crown. The crown that the constellation was named after.

Around midnight, Harry drops him off at his balcony again instead of the front door. He is careful to not get too close to the house, only as close as Draco will need to be to land on the ground, lest it recognises his foreign and intruding presence and rings the wards, disturbs the house.

They sort of stay like that for a while after, Harry hovering on his bike a little away from the parapet, and Draco standing there behind it, neither of them sure how to go about the rest of this. The moments before passed easy and timeless, but now the ending is the strangest, as if they are both still a little baffled by how well they came together this day.

"Well," Draco says, finally, the one to break the silence. "Good night then."

"Yeah." A beat. "This is so weird."

Draco's face falls, for a second, then gathers back up, flushing a dull pink. "Oh, well, so _sorry_ for trying to be polite—"

"No, I mean," Harry says quickly, a little over him. "I mean a good weird." Draco stops, chest moving a little slow. He is still on the defense, snippy and haughty and tense. "I didn't, um… not have fun."

It's half a moment after that the stiffness minutely drains from Draco's body, and he says, after a low breath, "I didn't hate this either."

Harry smiles at him, sort of tentative. His heart leaps in his chest when he gets a hint of it back.

"Good night," Harry says, softer. Draco nods, and if Harry doesn't know any better, he thinks the edge of his lips draw up right as he turns around. But it's too dark, and it can just be a trick of his imagination. He stares after Draco, even after he's disappeared inside. It's another half a moment that he puts his hands back on the handlebars, kickstarts it up, smiling a little to himself once more. He steers away.

For nights after, Harry will think of him. Him on his bike, how good he looked like that. His windswept wavy hair. Pink-flushed cheeks. The light in his eyes, bright and exhilarated for hours after.

…

  
  


The next time they meet is a chance encounter in Diagon Alley, a few days later. He catches sight of him through the window of a fancy robe shop, meets his eyes right as Draco looks up into the mirror, being fitted for what look like severely expensive robes. 

Harry hasn't stood there long or anything, just a few seconds of him trying to work out if it is really Draco he's seeing. But there aren't many people with a hair colour so white, a posture so graceful. Dressed that well.

Harry waves at him, hot with awkwardness and embarrassment upon being seen like this. He makes to move forward, fumbling to point his way ahead, as if to say, _I was just leaving_ , if only because he doesn't want to look creepy and stalker-ish. But he's only put his hand back into his pocket and made it a few steps before the door opens behind him with the ring of a bell. When he turns, Draco's standing there, an eyebrow lifted.

"I was just, um—" Harry says, trying to think of something. "I needed to buy some robes."

"By all means," Draco drawls, in a tone that suggested that he really didn't ask. But then it lapses into a sort of silence, and Harry is now wondering why exactly Draco came to follow him.

"Did you, um… is there something you wanted—"

Draco scowls. "Is there something _I_ — _? You_ were the one staring at _me_ — _"_

"I was just staring at the robes!" Harry says, quickly.

"Well then go on and stare at them all you like," Draco says, turning back into the shop.

"But I'm no good at—you know—I mean—"

Draco stops there, eying him. He clears his throat. "Yes. Of course you wouldn't — you have absolutely no sense of fashion or style, so of course I ought to…" He nods at him, superiorly, as if he's gracing him with his favour and generosity. "I ought to help you. Of course."

"You just said of course like, three times."

"Do you want my help or not?" Draco snaps, growing pinker.

"Uh," Harry says. He really doesn't need any new robes. Or rather, he doesn't necessarily want them, though Ron and Hermione are always hounding him to buy himself new things. "Yeah. Sure."

Draco waves him inside, asks him questions, like, _casual or fancy?_ as if he's the keeper of the robe shop or something. Fancy, Harry fumbles out, only out of an undecided impulse because none of this is planned out, and he's just going with whatever is coming to mind. _Any particular colour in mind?_ Draco chooses for him something green, with silver embroidery, another a royal blue, a few more. Harry isn't much for clothes, or appearance, but half of the ones he tries fit him well, in the shape of it as well as the overall look of it. He thinks he feels eyes on him, but when he looks at Draco, he's looking somewhere else. 

Harry stays to see him fitted up with the robes he will wear to his wedding, thinking Draco looks unfairly good in most of the ones he's trying out. But a strange, unsettled sort of feeling persists throughout. Sometimes he sees Draco's face in the mirror, distant and serious, but Draco's been that way ever since his mum died. Sometimes he just can't pinpoint what it is that he doesn't like about any of this, because surely if Draco has agreed to this wedding, there is a reason why. It's Draco's life. What does Harry know about anything? What place does he have in his life to feel anything about it?

He thinks of Draco at that gala where his engagement was announced, standing at Anthony's side with a wine glass in hand, looking just as unfairly good as he does now. Anthony always had his hand at his waist. He seemed to love Draco, kissed his cheek when he had to leave him, danced with him slowly. Draco did smile a lot, too.

"This one?" Draco asks him, smirking slightly at him in the mirror. It's white, golden embroidery. A thin, net-like, translucent fabric over the silken robe. It looks lovely.

"Yeah," Harry says. "Yeah, that looks good." But don't they all do, on him?

That's the one Draco buys, anyhow. Harry tries not to think it has anything to do with him.

  
  


…

  
  
  


Some nights later he finds himself at his balcony again, floating on his motorbike. He stays outside the wards around the Manor, sending a Patronus the rest of the way.

"What the fuck?" Draco hisses in a whisper, when he comes out of the door.

"Hello to you too," Harry whispers back, imitating his furious tone. 

"What are you doing here?"

"I thought you’d fancy another ride on this," Harry says, patting the side of his bike. He tells himself—he’s sure this isn’t too odd. But a lot of the things he thinks aren’t odd are, he is later told by Ron and Hermione, very odd. 

“It’s _eleven,_ ” Draco says.

“It was eleven that night too.”

Draco’s staring at him, lips parted, brows sharply drawn together. He shakes his head. Harry doesn’t know what comes over him, but he gives him a stupid, dopey grin, flips the motorbike over swiftly, laughing when he comes back upright. “Come on, Draco. Don’t you want to?”

He’s still staring at him that same way. But a few seconds after, Draco’s lips twitch, pressing together, nearly a hint of amusement. A soundless huff of mirth moving through his slender chest. He looks back at him again, says, “Alright. Fine.”

They land, eventually, upon a moor, the moon full above them. They sit upon grassy stones, gazing at the scatter of stars.

"You like that a lot, don't you?" Harry says, nodding at the motorbike parked a little sideways, some feet away. 

Draco hums, affirmative. He seems lighter, looser, more open. He did before too, and Harry likes him like this. "I like it on the road. It's like being on a broom, but more…" He waves a hand, vague, trying to find the word. "grounding."

Harry understands that, tells him just as much. "After the war," he says. "I think it's one of the few things that really _helped_. Besides the Mind-Healing and stuff. But sometimes I needed to just—get away from it all, instead of facing it, and this… this was that for me. You know?"

Draco looks at him. Again, his hair is tousled, pink across his face from the wind. He's in his pyjamas, all golden snitches, and it's strangely endearing, young. "That makes sense," he says.

"I'm sorry," Harry says, after a while. "About your mum."

Draco's throat convulses. He looks down at his knees, where his elbows are, a hand clasped loosely at the wrist.

"She saved my life." 

Draco frowns. This he didn't know, then. "She did?"

"Yeah. Volde—" Draco flinches. "Sorry. Sorry. You-Know-Who… he asked her if I was dead, in the Forbidden Forest, and she lied. That I was." Harry meets his eyes. "She did it for you."

For a few seconds, Draco doesn't move. There's a quiver of an emotion, slipping into his gaze, going red-rimmed. Then, he nods his head. Slow, then sort of quick. He clears his throat and turns his head away, denying Harry his face, the quick sheen of his eyes. He seems to be shivering.

After a long while, he says, "Thank you. Harry." His voice is mostly steady, only a bit thick from the cold, from something else. His jaw shifts slightly, soft breaths leaving him in the silence. 

Harry wants to take his hand. He doesn't. But he does take his leather jacket off, drapes it around Draco's shoulders. Draco's head lifts up at that, a glance down at it, up at him. When Harry gives him a small smile, a corner of his mouth quirks slightly, giving it back.

  
  


…

  
  
  


A lot of the time, Draco is busy preparing for the wedding; having to search for venues and deciding upon the decorative details and the guest list. Harry is busy with work, healing cursed people and ill people and injured people at St. Mungos. 

But still, every few nights, Harry finds himself at his balcony, and there comes a night when he finds Draco waiting there for him. A week turns to two, and two to three, and by then, they have begun to arrange these meetings. By then, Harry has long since let himself think of their friendship in words. Friends did things like these. They called each other by first name, and enjoyed each other's company, and liked being with each other. They talked about everything from their history to their future, what they'd hoped it would be.

Before the war, Harry had thought he would be an Auror, marry Ginny, have kids. Instead, he went into Healing instead, because he realised becoming an Auror would be repeating patterns that will never give him peace. Instead, he and Ginny broke up, and less than a year later, she got with Luna, and he got with Wayne for a few months. Before the war, Draco had similar prospects in mind. He would be married to a pureblood woman, and he would work in the Ministry, and live off the Malfoy wealth. But much of their wealth had gone to the Ministry, as a consequence of their crimes, and the Ministry wanted neither him or his father, and no pureblood family wanted to give their daughters' hands in marriage to him, and Draco ended up with Anthony instead.

"What about the, um… you know. Wouldn't you and your family want an heir or something?"

The sea is moving into each other unhurriedly. There is sand in Draco's hair. "Yes."

"But that can't happen anymore, can it?"

"There are ways," Draco says, quiet, after a very long time.

"Like magic?"

"Like magic."

Harry eyes him, in the silence of the low roar of seawaves. "Is that something you want too?" he finds himself asking.

Draco is lost in the sea, glaze-eyed. 

"Of course."

  
  


…

  
  
  


Another time, they have takeaway for dinner together, and fly over to that same moor they went to the very first time. 

"Would you teach me how to ride it?" Draco is staring thoughtfully at the bike.

So Harry does. He stands in front of him, helps him fit the helmet onto Draco's head. After, Draco straddles the front, Harry at his back, giving him all the instructions. How to magically kickstart the bike. All the controls and what they do. 

The first time, Draco jerks forward much too abruptly, halts just as abruptly as well, but nearly tips them over, and this startles a panicked shout from them both. They sit frozen and silent for a few seconds, wide-eyed, as if in shock, and break out of it only when Harry drops his forehead onto Draco's shoulder, snickering into it. Draco's head turns towards him over it, an amused breath of a laugh near Harry's temple. 

"And then? Like this?" Draco says. Harry goes on teaching him, and Draco, though wobbly at it, drives them a quarter of the way to Grimmauld Place.

  
  


…

  
  
  


"You let Draco Malfoy touch your…"

Harry stares at Ron, who looks like he's gone into quite the shock. Hermione comes into the doorway, in her sweats with a toast, sunken-eyed and limp as a zombie. She had a late night, studying for a theoretical test in curse breaking.

"Ron," Harry says.

"You let...Draco _Malfoy_ touch your…"

Hermione slowly disappears back into the kitchen.

"You really should finish that, because it's starting to sound a lot like something else now," Ginny says, smirking.

"Ginny!' Harry exclaims, mortified, at the same time Ron finally manages to force out, "...your _bike_?"

"So _what_ if I did?"

"You won't even let me— _me_ ! Your best friend of _eight years_ —touch your bike, but you'll let bloody _Draco Malfoy_ — _"_

This is a fair point, Harry thinks, with a fair amount of shame. The first time Ron asked to try his bike out, Harry said to him, _Ron. I love you, but...please stop touching my bike._

"You're just not as hot as he is, Ron. Get over it," Ginny says.

Ron is stupefied into silence, frowning, looking over at Harry. It lasts a little too long, to the point of making Harry fidgety.

"He looks really hot," Harry finally says. "On a bike."

"Interesting," Ginny says.

"No," Ron says, with dawning realisation. " _No_ . Come on, being mates is one thing, but he's—he's _Malfoy!_ "

"Yeah," Harry says, in a tone that sounds like _duh_. "And he's very attractive."

"He poisoned me!"

Harry opens his mouth, clamps it back shut, guilty.

" _And_ he's getting married. To _Anthony Crawford_."

Harry deflates even more. Right. That.

"What's going on?" Hermione says, more human and awake after her coffee. She settles in next to Harry.

"Harry likes Malfoy," Ron complains.

Hermione looks at Harry, frowning. "Harry…"

"I know," Harry says, removing his hands from his face. "I know, okay!"

"Yeah, I'm leaving," Ginny says, texting somebody, who's likely none other than Luna. "The girlfriend calls."

"Bye," Harry says. Ron and Hermione bid her their byes as well. Ginny waves at them absently, gets up and walks off. She is still engrossed in her texting, letting out a loud whoop of laughter at whatever Luna might have said before she gets into the fireplace. He looks back at Hermione, once she's gone. "Look, you don't have to say anything, and— and I'll keep a handle on it, okay?"

"I hope you know what you're doing, Harry," Hermione says, sighing.

"I do," Harry says. He thinks he does.

  
  


…

  
  


"A cell-foone," Draco repeats, sitting on the floor of Harry's living room, their backs against the couch.

"Yeah. A cellphone," Harry says. He's bought Draco one too. "It's a lot more convenient than, you know… a Patronus. Quicker. Here, try it."

Harry teaches him how to call, putting his own number on the speed dial to make it easier for him. Then he shows him how to text. Draco finally gets the hang of it, ten minutes or so after. He's always been quick to learn like that. 

Harry's phone vibrates. He opens it and checks the message.

_D: twat_

"Did you get it?" Draco asks, looking at him hopefully.

"Yeah," Harry deadpans. "I got it."

He sends one back.

_H: tosser_

Draco smirks at him, kicks at his foot. Harry kicks back, feeling childish, but grinning stupidly all the same.

The day after, Harry texts him in between receiving patients, behind his desk in his spinning chair.

_H: hi!! :)_

Draco's message comes minutes later.

_D: What is :)?_

_H: flip your phone sideways_

_D: I don't understand_

_H: did u do it the right way_

After a while,

_D: Ah_

_I see it now_

Harry smiles down at his phone.

_H: what are u doing right now_

_D: More wedding stuff. Boring as fuck_

_D: And you?_

_H: i dont have any patients, so just talking to u_

_H: i thought ud be more excited about ur wedding_

A patient comes in, and Harry is taken away. But when he checks his phone after, there is still no reply from him.

It comes a half an hour later.

_D: The planning process isn't particularly exciting_

_H: oh ok. do u need help with anything_

_D: No it's alright_

_D: Tell me about the cases you've had today_

_H: had several bt by far the most interesting one was this bloke who had both his hands stuck to his crotch_

_H: hes ok but it was rlly_

_something_

_D: My Merlin_

_I really can't be laughing right now_

Harry grins. 

_H: apparently he kept hitting on a girl and angered her_

_H: shes got a really good sticking charm bc it took me forever to get them off_

_H: and his underpants and trousers came off with it too_

_D: Go fuck yourself has taken on a new meaning_

Harry laughs, pressing a knuckle to his mouth.

_H: lol. i feel very unprofessional now_

_D: Well, to be fair, he sounds like he had it coming_

_What is lol? Are you raising your arms?_

_H: no. laugh out loud_

_D: ah_

His next patient is somebody that he's seen a fair amount over the years. She is a middle-aged witch named Agatha, and she has a sprained wrist this time. Harry has to put his phone away, doesn't realise he is still smiling slightly as he's fixing her up until Agatha asks him what it's for, amused.

"Oh, nothing," Harry mutters, wiping it away quickly. "Just thinking about something."

"Something, or somebody?"

Harry looks up at her, huffs a small smile. "Yeah. Somebody."

  
  


…

  
  


They're talking, lying on their backs sideways at the foot of the bed. Somehow they landed here, as Harry was showing him his Invisibility Cloak, the Marauder's Map, enraptured himself by that enraptured gaze of Draco's. His awe was nearly a kind of fear, touching them.

As Draco is telling him his childhood stories with Pansy, Harry finds himself sort of taken in by him, keeps straying to the movement of his mouth, and his smile. He's saying something about pranking Pansy with a spell that made anything she said to be in German, and this made her temper tantrum come out in German as well. Draco made high and theatrical impressions of her to Harry, to add to his story, how she had shrieked out all the cuss words at him.

" _Arschgeige_ !" This meant arsehole, Draco said, but literally translated to _arse violin_.

"What?" Harry asked, laughing madly.

"It's true," Draco says, laughing along with him. His eyes are crinkling, lit with it all, hands loose on his belly. His laughter fades into something nostalgic, and he shakes his head. "I miss her."

"What happened?"

"Nothing, really," Draco says. "She's in Greece, last I heard. And we write to each other. But I wish she was here."

Harry can't help but feel the smallness of the distance between them, the aching pull in his chest. They're sort of locked there like that, cheeks to the mattress, facing each other with the lingering of smiles. 

It fades, and Harry lifts his hand, touches Draco's cheek, careful and hesitant. It washes away all of Draco's expression, a quiver of a blink, a small part of his lips that has Harry fixated. Harry looks up into his eyes, seeking confirmation. He sees no resistance, only Draco's soft breaths growing heavier between them, and to Harry, loud enough to consume the room. His eyes flutter, as if on the edge of closing into the oncoming kiss.

Only, when Harry crosses the few inches between their faces, Draco's head turns away from him, and Harry stills. He remembers, then, that Draco is bound to somebody else, that Draco might be really, severely in love with Anthony, and now with this, it is undeniable that Draco does not feel that way about Harry.

Harry scrambles up to sit, hands on the sheets. "Sorry, I—" he tries to say, not entirely sure what it is he even wants to say. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have—"

"No, it's... it's alright," Draco says, a low rasp. He clears his throat. But he's still not looking at Harry.

Harry's throat convulses. He isn't really sure what to do now. His heart is heavy in his chest, as if full of water, and a sort of guilt, and fear, that he's made Draco uncomfortable. That he's ruined everything between them like this. They can't quite meet each other's eyes for a minute, two. And it's only when Harry's about to make up something about having to do something that Draco says, "Tea?"

It's awkward, but Harry says yes, because he doesn't quite want him to go yet, ever. It's still awkward even after, but Draco still doesn't go. There are some nights that he falls asleep next to him, listening to Harry talk, or just in one of their silences. He falls asleep next to him tonight too, always like he feels safe and comfortable enough to, and Harry catches the gentle process of it in glances. Him curled up there next to himself. The slow slip of his eyes to a close. The smoothing of his brows, the softening around his mouth. And it hurts, but it's okay. It's okay. Draco is precious to him, friend or lover, all the same.


End file.
